Re: Git --file doesn't override $HOME in version 1.8.1.2

From: Thomas Rast <trast@inf.ethz.ch>
Date: Jul 9, 2013, 11:49 UTC
Message-ID: <87mwpweywu.fsf@linux-k42r.v.cablecom.net>
In-Reply-To: <C8A88C530F38AE47B22BDC434090CBB0ED26E0@IT-EXMB01-HKI.it.local>

Sarajärvi Tony <Tony.Sarajarvi@digia.com> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Using Ubuntu 13.04 with Git 1.8.1.2 I stumbled upon a problem using Puppet.
>
> In Puppet we launch Git with the command: '/usr/bin/git config --file
> /home/qt/.gitconfig --get "user.name" "Qt Continuous Integration
> System"'
> However, puppet logs: "fatal: unable to access '/root/.config/git/config': Permission denied".
>
> Puppet is run as root, so HOME points to /root, but still -file should override the environment variable.
>
> If the same command is run directly from terminal as root, it works as well.

To elaborate (I briefly talked to Sarajärvi on IRC): this isn't about the fatal error; we downgraded this to a nonfatal error in 4698c8f (config: allow inaccessible configuration under $HOME, 2013-04-12).

Rather, it's very strange that 'git config --file foo' tries to look at any config file other than 'foo'. In a git repo:

  $ strace git config --file fooconfig test.var 2>&1 | grep 'open.*config'
  open("/home/thomas/.gitconfig", O_RDONLY) = 3
  open(".git/config", O_RDONLY)           = 3
  open("/home/thomas/.gitconfig", O_RDONLY) = 3
  open(".git/config", O_RDONLY)           = 3
  open("fooconfig", O_RDONLY)             = 3

I haven't looked into the code yet. Probably it's simply following the usual code paths to discover a repo and read its config. However, with the --file option, it shouldn't.

-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch